Thursday, May 30, 2013

Saving Graces: Journey from the Pit of Madness

Throughout
my high school years life was good. Intelligent and artistically
gifted, I was destined, we thought, to have a prestigious career and
a bright future. However,
another destiny awaited me.

In
my freshman year of college, I was terrified when I began to hear
voices without any person present to speak them. About a year later,
after several long hospitalizations, I was diagnosed with
schizophrenia, yet I did not believe it. This denial is a symptom,
and it is one of the greatest reasons that this disease is so hard to
control.

Medications
alone help to control it; medications which make you fat, sluggish,
and have a plethora of other side effects. So, if someone doesn't
believe they are ill, what possible motivation would they have to
stay on these meds? Little to none.

I
was living on my own—having left a full academic scholarship at
college due to this illness. I almost never took my medications. They
were attempts to control my brain; things to make me act the way
“They” wanted me to act. I worked when I could, ate when forced
to, and wandered through New Haven. The voices in my head were
abusive and foul and I struggled with guilt at having such irreverent
thoughts. The only prayer I had prayed in all those years was when my
heart uttered the words, “God, if you know everything, you
know how angry I am at you right now.” And that was a
profoundly honest prayer.

After
over 30 hospitalizations, and being deemed “hopelessly mentally
ill,” I met a man while in one of those hospitals. He was
interested in me; something few people were. We remained friends
following my discharge. I lived in a group home and faced a rather
bleak future. I was penniless, approaching 30 years old and Godless
as well, when this man asked me to marry him. I left the group home
and we embarked on a rocky yet committed relationship, still intact
after 22 years, by God's grace.

I'd
first begun to stabilize when I had my daughter in my 30th
year. And God blessed me with 14 years of freedom from psychosis
despite having life threatening brushes with illness. I was
completely dependent on a wheelchair for two years as a result of the
necessary but destructive effects of steroids needed for asthma. With
a miracle and lots of physical therapy, I did walk again. No
longer did I blame God for my problems; rather, I learned he is the
light in my darkness.

Eventually,
we moved to Pennsylvania. I worked at a local hospital where things
once more began to unravel. I was laid off and received the dire
diagnosis of Psoriatic Arthritis which was destroying my spine and
joints later necessitating multiple joint replacements. But worst of
all, my mind once more became infiltrated by voices and paranoia
which had, for years, receded. Now, they questioned the motives
of everyone.

In
terror, believing he would kill me, I left my husband and went in my
car on a panicked chase over three states, pursued only by my own
fear. The “chase” ended with a failed suicide attempt, which was
none other than divine intervention. God has thwarted every
psychotic, sincere attempt I made to end this life.

After
six subsequent hospitalizations, my doctor told my husband, “Your
wife's case is hopeless. The best thing for her and for you is to
leave her in a State hospital and to forget you ever knew her.” And
the doctor placed me on a waiting list for that state bed.
But God had other plans.

Suddenly,
I stabilized after a last ditch medication change and was released to
the care of my husband. There followed one more medication change,
and finally, the light came that pierced that thick darkness. I once
more began to bathe and comb my hair. I lost 60 pounds and exercised
daily. And God smiled.

I
now have several blogs with the purpose of aiding and educating
people with mental illness and their families, and am active in my
church, despite being severely hampered by the arthritic disease.

God
did not abandon me to the caprice of madness, nor to the
finality of death. I still struggle, mostly, now, with unrelenting
pain. I've had joint replacement surgeries, and more surgeries loom;
and there's always the threat of psychosis. I now look forward to the
day when I will enter God's kingdom with a healed body and a clear
mind.